This report provides estimates of the take-up for some of the main income-related benefits in Great Britain for the financial year 2016/17: Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Income Support/Income-related Employment and Support Allowance.

Take-up refers to the receipt of benefits someone is entitled to. There are some people who are entitled to benefits but not receiving them.

Take-up of benefits can be affected by a number of factors. Trying to explain the reasons for non-take-up is difficult and we do not have the data in our modelling to do this. But it is useful to outline some of the broad factors that have been found to have an effect to help put the results included here into context. Take-up may be affected by factors such as the attractiveness of the benefit, lack of awareness of the benefit or application procedure, lack of awareness of entitlement, the perceived stigma of receiving a benefit or other factors (Eurofound 2015, see page 11 of this document for the links).

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Income Related Benefits: Estimates of Take-up - Financial Year 2014/15

This report provides estimates of the take-up for the main income-related benefits in Great Britain for the financial year 2014/15: Pension Credit, Housing Benefit, Jobseekers Allowance (Income-based) and Income Support and Employment and Support Allowance (Income-related).

In this report we estimate take-up in two ways:

Caseload: Over a one year period, the average number of benefit recipients who received each benefit compared to the number there would have been if everyone entitled to the benefit claimed it. The caseload figures are rounded to the nearest 10,000 and percentages are rounded to the nearest percentage point.

Expenditure: Over a one year period, the average amount of a benefit claimed compared to the total amount that could have been claimed if everyone entitled to the benefit had claimed it. The amounts claimed and unclaimed are rounded to the nearest £10 million and percentages are rounded to the nearest percentage point.

Caseload and expenditure take-up rates are estimated using a formula. A point estimate is calculated, together with lower and upper bound estimates.

Throughout this report a family refers to either a single adult or couple living as married, and any dependent children.